This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C. Section 119 from an application for METHOD OF INPUTTING CHARACTERS IN A WIRELESS PORTABLE TERMINAL filed earlier in the Korean Industrial Property Office on Mar. 29, 1999 and there duly assigned Ser. No. 10743/1999.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the inputting of character data in a wireless portable terminal, and more particularly to a method of easily inputting the character data by minimizing the number of times a user has to depress the key pad.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, the development of wireless portable terminals follows the continuing trend toward carrying a smaller and lighter terminal. As the size of a wireless portable terminal becomes smaller, the space occupied by the input key pad in the wireless portable terminal also has to become smaller. For this reason, most wireless portable terminals include only the basic function keys and the numeral keys. Meanwhile, the diverse function of the wireless portable terminal leads to a trend towards increasing the number of keys necessary to facilitate the different needs.
In order to solve the above-mentioned problem in a given basic function key, a variety of operations is executed and ordered but depends on the number of times and the duration that a particular key is depressed. That is, one key can perform multiple functions by manipulating how and how often a given key pad is pressed. It is easier to set a key for performing one package operation. For example, a numeral xe2x80x9c1xe2x80x9d key may be depressed extendedly for a predetermined period of time for selecting a specific function.
Yet, there has been a problem that, when having to input a plurality of characters, the key input portion of the wireless portable terminal does not basically have a sufficient number of numeral keys to correspond individually to all different characters. Thus, the different characters are inputted in accordance with the depression frequency and the duration of the key pad depression. Thus, the conventional wireless portable terminal allows a plurality of characters to be allocated to one numeral key, thus the desired character to be inputted depends on the frequency of depressing the key pad. For example, in order to input a letter of the alphabet from xe2x80x9cA,xe2x80x9d xe2x80x9cB.,xe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cCxe2x80x9d, the same numeric key pad xe2x80x9c2xe2x80x9d has to be pressed at a different number of times depending on which letter of the alphabet is desired to be inputted. Accordingly, a user suffers the inconvenience of having to depress the same key too many times which results in the waste of operating time and inefficiency in inputting characters.
Therefore, an object of the invention is to provide a method of minimizing the frequency that a user""s depresses the key pad upon inputting the character data in a wireless portable terminal.
It is another object of the invention to provide a method of easily inputting the character data in a wireless portable terminal.
In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, a method of inputting a plurality of characters in a wireless portable terminal includes a memory for storing the plurality of characters and a plurality of indices associated with each one of the plurality of characters for each of character modes, comprising the steps of:
determining if a character-input mode is selected;
displaying at least one character along with at least one index associated therewith in response to the selection of the character-input mode;
determining if a key data corresponding to the index is inputted; and,
displaying and storing an associated character allocated to the index when the key data corresponding to the index is inputted.